Nero CD-Speed, Audio/Data benchmarks

CD Speed is a CD-ROM benchmark which can test the
most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this particular test we use a
pressed CD-ROM with about 640MB of data as the test disk. Using a CDR or CDRW as
the test disk may (or may not) impact the results slightly, so the pressed disk
is the de facto standard.

Samsung SM348 - CDSpeed Data Tests

Optical Drive

SM348

SW240

SW232

SW224

SC152

DVD500M

SW216

Disk Type

Data

Data

Data

Data

Data

Data

Data

Avg Speed

38.91x

31.06x

31.65x

30.82x

38.90x

32.30x

24.94x

Random Seek Time

90ms

93ms

90ms

87ms

86ms

86ms

94ms

1/3 Seek Time

104ms

100ms

101ms

91ms

105ms

100ms

112ms

Full Seek Time

175ms

160ms

169ms

137ms

181ms

164ms

192ms

CPU use: 1X

0%

1%

1%

1%

1%

0%

1%

CPU use: 2X

1%

2%

2%

3%

2%

1%

2%

CPU use: 4X

3%

5%

4%

7%

4%

2%

5%

CPU use: 8X

6%

10%

9%

11%

8%

3%

9%

Disk Recognition Time:

9.10s

4.63s

5.2s

9.15s

6.30s

0.01s

-

Disk Eject Time

1.31s

1.33s

1.39s

1.12s

1.05s

1.19s

1.19s

Disk Load Time:

1.21s

0.98s

1.080s

1.10s

1.14s

7.26s

1.14s

CD speed tests
are important, but as the size of hard drives have
ballooned, less and less of us are playing games, or running software from the
CDROM as we used to long ago when storage was smaller, and much more expensive.
The SM348 boasts the best average speed of the bunch (38.9X) and
among the slowest disc recognition times. The rest of the test variables are
in line with the other drives.

CD Speed is a CD-ROM
benchmark which can test the most important features of a CD-ROM drive. In this
particular test we use a pressed Audio CD with about 65 minutes of audio on it
as the test disk. CDROM's in general have a harder time processing audio data,
and hence the results can be drastically slower than that of data tests
alone.

Samsung SM348 - CDSpeed Audio
Tests

Optical Drive

SM348

SW240

SW232

SW224

SC152

DVD500M

SW216

Disk Type

Audio

Audio

Audio

Audio

Audio

Audio

Audio

Avg Speed

30.56x

27.44x

24.89x

22.98x

18.97x

29.96x

22.32x

Random Seek Time

149ms

92ms

93ms

86ms

88ms

88ms

97ms

1/3 Seek Time

186ms

106ms

107ms

102ms

98ms

95ms

98ms

Full Seek Time

276ms

161ms

170ms

157ms

167ms

161ms

163ms

DAE Quality

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

CPU use: 1X

1%

1%

1%

2%

1%

0%

2%

CPU use: 2X

2%

3%

3%

6%

3%

1%

4%

CPU use: 4X

4%

7%

7%

14%

5%

2%

7%

CPU use: 8X

100%

14%

14%

23%

11%

4%

13%

Disk Recog. Time:

7.49s

3.99s

9.16s

8.38s

4.35s

0.01s

-

Disk Eject Time:

1.49s

1.33s

1.37s

1.10s

1.06s

1.19s

1.18s

Disk Load Time:

1.23s

0.98s

1.08s

1.10s

1.14s

7.33s

1.14s

Samsungs' SM348 drive nets an improvement over the other
contenders here, reaching an average CD-audio read speed of 30.56X. CPU usage jumps
up to 100% at 8X; we're not quite sure why this
occurred.